Schock stays busy as 'surrogate' for Romney campaign

Thursday

Aug 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMAug 30, 2012 at 10:31 AM

To say it's been a busy week in Tampa, Fla., for U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock might be an understatement.

The Peoria Republican has spent time on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Chicago's WGN and WMAQ-TV stations, spent an afternoon on "radio row" doing five-minute interviews with nationally syndicated programs from Glenn Beck to Michael Medved, and talked to the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post and a host of others.

Chris Kaergard

To say it's been a busy week in Tampa, Fla., for U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock might be an understatement.

The Peoria Republican has spent time on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Chicago's WGN and WMAQ-TV stations, spent an afternoon on "radio row" doing five-minute interviews with nationally syndicated programs from Glenn Beck to Michael Medved, and talked to the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post and a host of others.

It's all in the course of official business as the second-term lawmaker works as a "surrogate" for the presidential ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan - essentially one of the chosen few sharing their message in the national media.

Among the audiences Schock is reaching out to is young voters, a group that he thinks the Republican Party can make inroads with.

"I think our challenge is more of an intellectual argument than an emotional argument," he said. "Barack Obama did a very good job of appealing to emotion (among young voters in 2008). . . . Now that the sizzle has worn off and the economy is in a world of hurt and young people are looking for jobs, I think it's opened the door for our party to compete for young people."

He said the GOP needs to concentrate on economic arguments, emphasizing that "each dollar of debt is a deferred tax on young Americans."

Schock also had high praise for vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, a colleague he's gotten to know well over the last four years during early morning gym workouts and during flights back to their home districts.

"He's the citizen's favorite legislator," he said of Ryan, widely praised throughout the GOP for generating concrete policy proposals. "He's exactly what citizens want in Washington, D.C. . . . Paul Ryan is that person who gets things done, who puts out ideas that both Republicans and Democrats can rally behind."

The delegate

At-large Peoria City Councilman Ryan Spain is in Tampa as an alternate delegate for Romney, and has seized the opportunity to "get the chance to interact and meet people from all across the country," swapping stories and trading ideas with folks in other delegations.

He's also seen some fun moments of home-state pride, as when California - alphabetically coming sooner in the delegations casting delegate votes to nominate a presidential candidate - tried to take credit for President Ronald Reagan.

"There was a back and forth (Tuesday) between the California delegation . . . and then the Illinois delegation, which had a rebuttal based on our loyalties to Reagan and his birthplace here," he said Wednesday.

When Romney takes the stage Thursday night to formally accept his party's blessing as nominee, Spain obviously hopes for many of the basics - a clear outline of where the former governor and businessman hopes to take the nation and his strategy for executing that vision - but he's looking for more, too.

"Something that's very important to me is the ability to create compromise, to cooperate with both sides to accomplish things that otherwise wouldn't happen," he said. "It's been my biggest disappointment lately in politics, that we seem to have less of that sense of working together.

"That may not be a popular theme to address in a convention hall filled with your own greatest fans, but I think that's a message our country needs. Some of the best things we're able to accomplish come when we work together."

From the grassroots

There really is no good way to describe the feeling that comes from attending "the Super Bowl of politics," Peoria County Republican Party Chairwoman Katherine Coyle said Wednesday from Tampa.

But part of what it creates is an energy among the grassroots faithful that helps translate into action during the final push toward Election Day on Nov. 6.

"You need to fire people up so they'll want to go out there on a Saturday morning and knock on doors for three hours" to spread the party's message and get out the vote, Coyle said of what she hopes to hear from Romney on Thursday night.

"He needs to teach us and tell us how we can communicate his plan" to improve America, she said, so that the message can be relayed to voters across central Illinois and elsewhere. It's a message she's confident he can deliver.

"The one thing he doesn't have to convince us of is leadership ability," Coyle said. "He is a leader, he has been a leader."

Chris Kaergard can be reached at 686-3135 or ckaergard@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisKaergard.